


straw from gold, silver from tin

by rybari



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Fantasy AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 06:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5775718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rybari/pseuds/rybari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, at the edge of a forest with dark leaves, a caravan guard nearly freezes to death. A reclusive hunter decides to help him. They find that there are strange things in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	straw from gold, silver from tin

Emil woke to something prodding at his mouth. He cracked one eye open blearily. He felt prickly-painful all over, warmth seeping through what felt like a thick blanket. All he could make out in the flickering light was a hand, and in the hand a spoon, and in the spoon something that smelled like food. He forced his chin up to swallow whatever-it-was, his mouth so dry he could barely taste the soup before it was already down his throat. It scalded, but his stomach was twisting itself into knots at the promise of more.

Something helped him sit up on the rough mattress, stuffing padding behind his back, before shoving the soup bowl on his lap. Footsteps padded. Emil was wholly focused on devouring the soup as fast as he could, though his joints didn’t seem to bend right. He chewed on the last scraps of chicken and overcooked carrot as he looked around, his head clearing.

He was sitting on a hard little bed, shoved up in the corner. The rafters were packed with winter stores – strings of onion and cabbage and other vegetables; Emil spied a bulging sack of potatoes at the end of his mattress. The house-if it could be called that- was dominated by the long table by the fireplace, dedicated to what looked like an army’s supply of traps and arrows next to a recurve bow. And crouched next to the fireplace, hanging a kettle above the fire, was his rescuer. His doublet was bulky, but his long sleeves fit closely to his skin. Emil could wrap his thumb and forefinger around one thin wrist.

“Who are you?” he croaked.

The rescuer turned around. His eyes caught the light of the fire briefly and it seemed to Emil as though they flashed bright blue. He blinked, and the illusion vanished. “No one,” the man said.

“Ah.” Emil squinted. “Well, I’m Emil Västerström. What time is it? I think –” he knuckled his throat, wincing at the rasp in his voice. “I lost my caravan. And – I don’t remember - how did you find me?”

“Face-down in the snow. Half-dead.”

Emil blinked.

The rescuer sat back on his heels to talk. With his face out of shadow, Emil was startled to see that his rescuer was probably the same age as he was. He had high cheekbones set in a pale face; his hair, sticking up every which way, was thundercloud gray. He looked down at the pot, which jolted Emil out of his spell; he hadn’t even been aware he was staring.

Emil tried to clear his throat, staring down at his lap. “You’ve, um. I can repay you for the food.”

“No need.” The rescuer ran a finger around the lip of his bowl and licked it. It was appallingly rude. “I sold your sword.”

Emil squawked. “You what?!”

“It wasn’t good quality.” The rescuer – the thief – continued, taking a few copper coins out of his pocket and plinking them on the table. “It only just covers everything you took.”

“I’ll have you know,” Emil growled, “that it was high-quality steel! You’ve probably already guessed from my noble features, but I came from a distinguished family. A ruffian like you simply didn’t sell it to someone who would appreciate it.”

The thief looked at him blankly. “It was dented.”

“That’s how swords work -” Emil started to say, before swallowing the rest of his sentence with a cough. He winced. The thief looked at the copper coins on his table, swept the rest of them into his hand, and rose in a fluid, graceful motion. He filled a cup from one of the many shelves built into the hut with water from the kettle and shoved it at Emil.

“It’s nearly warm enough,” he said.

Emil took it. Well, he reasoned, he did drag him inside his hovel and give him food. “Now really, what is your name?” Emil asked, after he had guzzled the water.

Hesitation. The thief finally sighed. “Lalli.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if he wanted to escape through the chimney. “…of the forest.”

“Right.” Emil said. His head felt very heavy on his neck, like it would roll off. The cup was slippery from his less-than-elegant attempt to inhale the water. Lalli caught it easily when he lost his grip on it, and pushed him down firmly onto the pillows.

“You can sleep one more night, but you’ll have to get out tomorrow,” Lalli said. “Town is a day’s walk from here.”

Emil shuttered his eyes closed. “Thank you,” he murmured, slipping out of consciousness.  
*  
While being a caravan guard had been humiliating, Emil had long since discovered that being a morning person was something of an innate skill of his. So it followed that he woke at dawn the next day. It did surprise him that he only woke up for an hour at a time to eat a bowl of the frankly horrendous stew Lalli had. Or tea, on occasion.

He watched through his lashes as Lalli stalked into the house with a lean winter deer over his shoulders. Emil had closed his eyes when it came to the gutting though. It felt like he was looking at something private, or at the very least far too disgusting for his sensibilities. But by the second day he felt that he’d recovered enough that he really couldn’t justify lazing around. It didn’t surprise him that he felt relatively stable the next day.

Lalli, however, startled when he opened the door to see Emil washing his face.

“Good morning!” Emil said. He was sitting in the only chair, basin of melted snow propped against the arrows, as standing for too long had caused his head to swim. “I only just woke up, so I haven’t made breakfast of any sort. Do you happen to have a comb?” He dipped a rag in the water and passed it behind his ears and around his neck.

Lalli tipped his head to one side, like he was studying something so odd he couldn’t quite make out it was real. Then he shrugged. “Don’t have a comb.”

“Hm. I can get that in town.” Emil rubbed the backs of his hands, and then his palms. “Could you guide me, later?”

Lalli nodded. “Later.”

He was only in long enough to get a length of cloth and go back outside again, the scabbard of a long knife tapping against his leg.

Emil wet his hair and drew his fingers through it to get out the worst of the tangles, but it would want something finer if he wanted to look presentable. He tipped the basin outside, fighting the wind and a few stinging flurries of snow to close the door, and managed to make it back to the bed in time to stop the buzzing feeling in his limbs. Then he dragged a chair and a blanket closer to the fire, staring at his hands and feet. None of them looked like they were going to fall off, but…he couldn’t remember how the frostbite test went. Dip them in boiling water? Squeeze garlic on the afflicted areas? His fingers didn’t feel like something was biting on them anymore when he held them out to the fire, which was surely a good sign. He sighed.

The wind had graduated to a howling gale by the time Lalli came back, red-faced from cold and gloves dark with blood. Emil folded over the edge of the blanket he’d reduced to ash and looked appropriately alarmed when Lalli threw his cloak to the floor.

“Storm season,” he said, grimacing, “has arrived. Won’t be able to get to town ‘till spring.”

Emil opened his mouth, then closed it. Then opened it. “We’re stuck here? For the whole of winter?”

Lalli looked from his rafters, to his shelves, obviously doing the math in his head. “Stuck,” he confirmed. “And hungry.”

**Author's Note:**

> hey dudes...I am not updating this anymore! I have written up a summary here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L-PMFrDKkDS4YId6klbEBSN_QELVdedJQJTtmchHDjk/edit?usp=sharing of what happens next. Sorry about that!


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